Songs

By Don Walker and Jimmy Barnes

For over forty years, Don Walker’s songwriting has captured what it is to be Australian. From Cold Chisel to Catfish, Tex, Don & Charlie to his solo work, as well as many other writing collaborations, Walker’s words are poetic, moving and incisive. Including classics such as “Khe Sanh”, “Flame Trees”, “Cheap Wine” and “Harry was a Bad Bugger”, this collection reveals the breadth of Walker’s vision and the precision of his prose. These lyrics live on the page, with or without the memory of music.

Interspersed with autobiographical sketches and anecdotes, Songs is a must-have for fans of Walker’s brilliant, razor-sharp storytelling.

Includes a foreword by Jimmy Barnes

‘Pithy, poignant, and provocative, Don Walker is the Poet Laureate of Australian rock 'n’ roll.’ —Mandy Sayer

‘Pithy, acerbic, dry and deeper than a drought-ridden dam. Don’s words are truly a thing of wonder.’ —Peter Garrett

‘As ever, the doyen to the rest of us. Beauty, humour and pathos coexist in his songs. Any time I try to write, the voice of The Don is in my head: “You sure you wanna do that?” Consistently, persistently, the master.’ —Tim Rogers

‘The thinking man’s poet. He delivers lyrics that paint true pictures of life in detail, and melodies that have been a part of our musical fabric as long as I can remember.’ —Troy Cassar-Daley

‘The stories in Don's songs open up to wider stories back and beyond. His lyrics are lean, clear-eyed, love-thirsty and lonesome. A bulls-eye straight to the human heart.’ —Paul Kelly

‘Don’s ability to get at the miniature of any subtle emotion and gently turn it out for you to see is amazing.’ —Ian Moss

‘One of the great poets of the Australian experience. His lyrics speak of and to an Australia that is too rarely glimpsed in song, giving voice to the forgotten and dispossessed, and transforming the currents of grief and love and tenderness that run through even the most ordinary of lives into something universal.’ —James Bradley

‘A mountain of songwriting genius, Mr Walker's tales and tunes are interwoven into the very fabric of Australia. The melodies alone conjure up magical memories of times shared, be it tragedy or joy. I cannot imagine this country without these evocative, rockin and memorable songs.’ —Phil Jamieson

• Language: English
• Publisher: Black Inc. Books
• Release date: Jul 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781743820988

Don Walker

Don Walker is one of Australia's leading songwriters - first with Cold Chisel and now as a solo performer and with Tex, Don & Charlie.

Book preview

Acknowledgements

Introduction

I BEGAN WITH A SONG FOR a high school music class. There were no words, but that song still sounds good now, for a first effort. Several years later I wrote another one for the band I was in, which we performed at the Hoadley’s National Battle of the Sounds at the Garden Theatre in Grafton. That one had lyrics, fortunately now lost.

After I moved to a regional university, dreaming about songs became one of several ways to avoid study late at night. The first summer break was spent in the cotton fields near Wee Waa. Forty-degree dry heat, with a hoe and no hat, ten hours a day, is a lot of time to think.

There were other bands to draw my mind astray, playing up and down the New England Tablelands. There were other summer breaks at the Parkes radio telescope and at the Weapons Research Establishment north of Adelaide, and a lot of hitchhiking and driving rudimentary vehicles between.

Cold Chisel formed in Adelaide at the end of 1973, which meant I had a close group of friends and an enterprise to write for. That band, and the songs I thought they needed, became the obsessive focus of an otherwise aimless life.

The songs were bad. The loyalty shown by my bandmates was extraordinary. I was trying to cram Duke Ellington and Led Zeppelin and the memory of someone I held dear into one net, and the results were often a plodding mess that resembled none of the ingredients.

We were playing in rooms where no one wanted to hear anything they hadn’t heard before, where the patrons worked too hard in the day to tolerate having their time wasted at night, so the songs improved.

Lyrics are made to be experienced, not read. The most powerful lyrics are often meaningless when they’re deboned from a song, like looking at black-and-white photos of a painting. But, I’ve sent what I think are the best in for printing here anyway.

I learned in those clubs, and from my peers and those I admired, that there’s really only one rule – don’t bore people. That’s how I tried to write, and how I’ve tried to make the selection ahead.

1970–76

THESE SONGS WERE WRITTEN IN truck-stops and on overnight drives on the Hay Plain and the Nullarbor and the Newell, and in motel rooms from Geraldton to Cairns, in winter in St Kilda and in the tropics with no money.

Some of them are naïve. I was young, and couldn’t imagine that they’d ever be read.

Khe Sanh

I left my heart to the sappers round Khe Sanh

And my soul was sold with my cigarettes to the blackmarket man

I’ve had the Vietnam cold turkey

From the ocean to the Silver City

And it’s only other vets could understand

About the long-forgotten dockside guarantees

How there were no V-Day heroes in 1973

How we sailed into Sydney Harbour

Saw an old friend but couldn’t kiss her

She was lined, and I was home to the lucky land

And she was like so many more from that time on

Their lives were all so empty, till they’d found their chosen one

And their legs were often open

But their minds were always closed

And their hearts were held in fast suburban chains

And the legal pads were yellow, hours long, pay packets lean

And the telex writers clattered where the gunships once had been

But the car parks made me jumpy

And I never stopped the dreams

Or the growing need for speed and novocaine

So I worked across the country end to end

Tried to find a place to settle down, where my mixed-up life could mend

Held a job on an oil-rig

Flying choppers when I could

But the nightlife nearly drove me round the bend

And I’ve travelled round the world from year to year

And each one found me aimless, one more year the worse for wear

And I’ve been back to South-East Asia

And the answer sure ain’t there

But I’m drifting north, to check things out again

You know the last plane out of Sydney’s almost gone

Only seven flying hours, and I’ll be landing in Hong Kong

There ain’t nothing like the kisses

From a jaded Chinese princess

I’m gonna hit some Hong Kong mattress all night long

Well the last plane out of Sydney’s almost gone

Yeah the last plane out of Sydney’s almost gone

And it’s really got me worried

I’m goin’ nowhere and I’m in a hurry

And the last plane out of Sydney’s almost gone

The Party’s Over

Hey, when I walk with you

The ancient streets, the ancient sounds

That we used to know

All around

Our days were long ago

The party’s over

The party’s over

Baby, in the rooms upstairs

The guns were cleaned but never used

Early middle age

Cut the fuse

Just a café society

The party’s over

Yeah the party’s over

Temple bells are all that remain

And the plans we made are now no more

Out of the dreams we knew

It’s only you that survived

The long occupation

Then the war

When I go

Spread my ashes on the sea

Will you remember me

Years away

’Cause I won’t be back this way

The party’s over

Yeah, the party’s over

One Long Day

City life is closing in on me

The way things go, thirty years

Bus timetable’ll be my elegy

Up at seven every working day

Pay comes in, pay goes out

It’s a week-by-week charade

General panic in the marketplace

Boss found hung in office

Could not stand the pace

And as the peak-hour traffic jams below

Someone gets the story, somebody spreads the rumour

People come and go

I wandered down along the river last night

Call me romantic, I say I couldn’t sleep

Until the first light struck me down

Padding homeward on the inside lane

Early morning, freeway’s cool and quiet

Dodging rubber stains

People talking in a seaside bar

I ain’t sentimental, but Lord

Sometimes I get that gypsy urge to travel far

You know I’ll disappear some long weekend

Find a mangrove landscape

Stretch out along some busted jetty

And forget who I am

You got to move

You got to go

You got to be somebody

You got to roll

You got to stop

You got to change

You got to make a little money

And be a little strange

And one long day

Is all it takes to steal her heart away

One long night

And it’s alright, you’ve done it again

Soft, low words

And slender ladies, beneath the café fans

One long day

Laid by dreams

Cotton dresses, a Spanish border town

Dreams so far

From the subway, the crowds heading home

Close each day

In technicolour, a million miles away

One long night and you’re alone

Meanwhile

City ways

Life goes creeping on

Sometimes

I get the blues

Home and Broken Hearted

I hiked up to Sydney in the week before Christmas

It was thirty-eight degrees in the shade

Bought a second-hand Morris for a cheap two-twenty

And drove it down to Adelaide

She boiled for an hour twenty miles out of Euston

I thought the heat would never end

But I knew I’d be home for Christmas with my Sandy

And a few extra dollars to spend

I drove it to the buyer just as fast as I could go

I was talking to his teenage son

I sure hope it lasted for the poor little bastard

At least until he’d had some fun

I caught a taxi homeward with great anticipation

Thinking all you have to do is try

There was a note propped up against the dressing-table mirror

Dear Jimmy, it’s over, goodbye!

Home and broken hearted

I’ve been pasted to the telephone

Boxing Day break was wasted sitting home on my own

The beer we bought for Christmas ran dry this afternoon

And on the radio it’s New Year’s Eve

What a lowdown time of the year to pack your luggage and leave

Went to a party, tried to drink myself happy

The steaks were washed away in the rain

Finished up in bed with an old acquaintance

She’ll never be my friend again

And everyone was asking me where’s the little woman

Rolled home before the rain could stop

I’ve been sitting for days reading pre-Christmas papers

With my heels on the tabletop

Juliet

Jetlag cramps the lonely face

Cheekbones pinched and tired

It’s a cold tarmac breeze

That wraps the terminal around

Flight-times drag the night along

Cab skids down the freeway

Time to find a bed

For the weeks ahead

It’s goodbye

Ice-lines rim the city streets

And tyre-whines rip the blacktop

And the lamps wheel above

The misty overpass

And Bergman’s face in black-and-white

Repeated down the alleys

A prayer above

For broken love

And goodbye

Juliet in travel coat

Leans wasted on the window

Takes a long, long drag

To try and settle down

It kills her how he turned away

How he ripped their love apart

Starts to cry

Lets the curtain fall

It’s goodbye

to music by Jimmy Barnes

Daskarzine

Well Daskarzine she was pretty bland

As she stretched out in the corner of the room

She was oh so lazy with her pistol hand

And her hair hung hot off the loom

A red-eyed Chicken felt like stepping in

But his lines lacked their customary cool

Her conversation flowed like treacle from a tin

And Chicken felt like some kind of fool

Oh Yeah!

Her every move

Is a lesson in street ballet

And they speak her name in cheap hotels

From Turkey to Marseilles

Seduction seems to hang in the dressing-room air

But no one knows just who’s seducing who

She puts it out in wave after wave

And never seems to miss the slightest cue

Outside in the wings

The curtain-boys cry lonely

Their one true love is Daskarzine

And for her they’ll all die slowly

Oh babe, she says, we’ve got to die sometime

It’s the sweetest thing we do

Why not die from month to month

With my touch to help you through

Now Chicken left the room feeling angry and cold

Young Stetson looked reluctant and lame

Daskarzine had him neatly pigeonholed

And he was just clinging blindly to his name

I’m Stetson and I ain’t so bad, he kept on saying

But his mind was trapped in some kind of cage

He had failed at the ancient art of role-playing

And was fighting to leave the bleeding stage

On the radio

A tenor saxophone

Cries sweet jazz poetry

And it breaks on Daskarzine’s façade

Of false serenity

H-Hour Hotel

I been on the run from bar to bar

Hunchin’ down and movin’ fast

These last few days I’ve been so alone

I got my hat pulled down to quarter-mast

You’re the only decent thing I’ve seen

In this whole hotel since Danny died

The loneliness these past few years

Was thick enough to chew

You hit me like a Turkish bath

The minute I came through the door

Baby I’ll break down and cry

If you don’t feel it, too

They were gathered round in high-class bars

Doctors’ wives and trendy cokers

Danny ’n’ me we went a bit too far

There was one too many smooth stockbrokers

The mob got ugly just like that

And cut him up with butter